I
need to confess that my career in rock and roll
(as a simple listener) has been put between parentheses
from, say the mid-eighties until the late nineties,
a period where I’ve been much more into jazz.
That’s why, even if I had heard about the
Smashing
Pumpkins of course, I couldn’t
claim that I knew them. Even the name of ‘Billy
Corgan’ didn’t really ring a bell
to me – Who? Billy
Cobham? Are you sure he’s playing with
the Pumpkins, Arthur? -, so I had to trust my son
when he told me that I should go see them at the
Foire aux Vins. “They play hard but not always”
was his teaser. Well, indeed, not always…

So,
here we are again in the coquille, surrounded by
7000 guys and girls, most dressed in black, which
is a bit scary as black is now really out of fashion,
except among the fans of hard rock and its numerous
variants. So it ought to be ‘hard’ tonight.
There’s a guest band for a start, a funny
bunch of locals called Los
Disidentes del Sucio Motel (how, err, Spanish
is that?), and god they are… err, hard. Guitars
almost on the knees, Ray-Bans, black shirts - white
ties… And their music, extremely noisy, all
songs sounding like rehashes of Black Sabbath’s
Paranoid, only louder and faster. I wrote 'humorous
pneumatic drills'. Now, they had a brainwave, a
guy dressed up as a sheriff patrolling the stage
and checking that the band played loud and fast
enough every two minutes. Yes, that was quite funny.
Anyway, after their song ‘Pirrrattts and sunglasseezzz’
(in English in the original), a faster copy of something
by Blue Oyster Cult I think - or was it Steppenwolf?
Bad Co? Arthur says 'Queens of the Stone Age' -
they are stopped by the organisers who still have
to prepare the stage for the Pumpkins. Smart decision.
I ask Arthur how this kind of music is named; he
answers ‘dad, it’s a mix of hardcore,
metal and hard rock’. Okay… The local
press calls it ‘stoner’. Alright, alright!
I’m feeling more and more like Alfred Barnard
visiting Islay for the first time, or maybe rather
Zululand.

But
it’s time for the Smashing Pumpkins. From
what I gather, the band used to be very successful
in the early nineties, selling something like 16
million CD’s in the US alone, but internal
problems (and, of course, drugs) led to several
changes of line-ups, especially the girls at the
bass. There has been the rather famous Melissa
auf der Maur at some point… And then the
band was disbanded in 2000, only to be reunited
early this year by singer, guitarist and leader
Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy
Chamberlin, all other former members having
turned the offer down. The new band performed live
for the first time since 2000 on May 22, 2007, in
Paris, and all tickets have sold in a flash. Yet,
the coquille is only two-third full tonight, but
it’s true that we’re very far from Paris…
Now, I’ve also read that the band pulled mixed
feelings when they decided to sell four different
versions of their new album Zeitgeist through three
different networks on one side (iTunes, Target and
Best Buy), each getting a different bonus track,
and all other networks on the other side, all getting
only the ‘official’ twelve-track version.
Which meant that die-hard Pumpkins fans ‘had’
to buy the album four times (any resemblance with
any whisky company is purely coincidental). Well,
one shouldn’t be puzzled with the rise of
illegal music downloading after that kind of move…

Anyway, on the stage are Billy ‘Yul Brynner’
Corgan (guitar, lead vocals and lider maximo),
Jimmy Chamberlin (very excellent drummer I must
say), Jeff
Schroeder (in charge of the apocalyptic rhythm
and solo guitars), Ginger
Reyes (aka Ginger Sling, girl – and
bass) and Lisa
Harriton (keyboards – and girl). And
there’s a sixth member, consisting in the
hundreds of spotlights that sometimes make the
whole set look like a fireworks show accompanied
with music rather than the contrary. The good
thing is that it’s easier to take notes
as the hall is sometimes lit as if it was daylight,
but the band is too goddam loud for me to even
think of reading the tasting notes in the latest
issue of Whisky Magazine I’ve brought in
my pocket just in case.

So, they are all playing the five or six first
songs extremely loud and heavy - I insist - except
for the keyboards that are much less to the front
than on the records (yes I’ve listened to
some). Billy Corgan has a nice voice I must say,
which he sometimes pushes to the limits. I’m
thinking of Billy Idol, well.... Corgan is also
a very good guitar player and likes to quote several
other bands, including Pink Floyd in Umma Gumma
if I’m not mistaken. He also does the Star-Spangled
Banner thing, not ala Hendrix that is but now,
it is to be wondered why so many American artistes
seem to enjoy making their international audiences
boo and hiss their national anthem. Is that some
sort of self-mortification? Or does it simply
sell? Corgan also likes to make his guitars sound
like whales, which is always a hit. Not simply
rock and roll postures, he’s really good
at all that.

But
sincerely and just between us, why the hell are
the Pumpkins playing so loud? Now, good news,
since the Chemical Brothers, I’ve got my
set of earplugs in my pocket (yeah, next to Whisky
Magazine) and believe me, they didn’t stay
in my pocket for long, but our foolhardy neighbours
had to leave it to simple cigarette filters, which
proves that plain cigarettes can be really harmful
to your health. On stage, after the apocalypse
of St. Billy, that is to say the six first songs,
the latter suddenly picks up an acoustic guitar
and starts to sing a very nice ballad, with only
Lisa Harriton’s keyboard in the background.
I think it’s called ‘On my own (not
worth asking)’. Really pretty! And then
another excellent and slightly folkish ballad,
only voice and guitar… And then another
one, with the full band this time. A bit dark
and sort of haunting, nice. But we’re soon
back to much heavier businesses, all guitars handled
like Tommy guns again, including the diminutive
Ginger Reyes’ bass. Are they getting better
or am I getting used to the Pumpkins’ elephantine
sound? There are several other very loud songs,
and then I ask Arthur how this genre is called.
He answers ‘… ea… y …
ar… o… ee…’. Bloody earplugs.

It’s already the encore (you say they have
been playing for one hour and a half, really?).
Just the piano, no guitars, no drums. Lisa Harriton
starts to play… Too early for Billy Corgan,
who orders her to start it all again. Gosh, I
hope he won’t fire his brand new keyboardist
right after the show! It’s another ballad,
she plays it very well, but leaves her keyboards
when the second song from the encore starts, while
the rest of the band is back. Wait, there’s
kind of a heavy (of course) larsen somewhere…
What is it? Billy Corgan jumps onto the podium
where the keyboards are located. Dammit, she forgot
to shut them down when she left! Please, Billy,
don’t fire her, she’s been great tonight!

The
band starts the very last song of the gig, it’s
called ‘Muzzle’.

“I
knew exactly where I was and I knew the meaning
of it all and I knew the distance to the sun and
I knew the echo that is love and I knew the secrets
in your spires and I knew the emptiness of youth
and I knew the solitude of heart and I knew the
murmurs of the soul.” I’m not far
from thinking that this is the best song of the
show. Too bad, it’s also really the last.
The band leaves, only Corgan stays on stage, saluting
the cheering crowd for at least ten minutes. Okay,
maybe five. Time to remove my earplugs, now only
half-deaf, for exchanging a few words with my enthusiastic
progeny. ‘So, Arthur, was that a mix of hardcore,
metal and hard rock as well?’

‘…
ot e...ac… ly, dad, … was …ust
… mashing pumpkins!!!’

Mashing
some pumpkins? That idea never occurred to me but
maybe I should pass it to some friendly brewers
next time I fly to Scotland! - Serge (including
the crappy photographs)